The Fantasy Review‘s list of 7 Fantasy Book Series for Fans of Trudi Canavan’s Black Magician Trilogy.
The Innocent Mage (Kingmaker, Kingbreaker, #1) by Karen Miller
From the blurb:
Being a fisherman like his father isn’t a bad life, but it’s not the one that Asher wants. Despite his humble roots, Asher has grand dreams. And they call him to Dorana, home of princes, beggars . . . and the warrior mages who have protected the kingdom for generations.…
The Way of Shadows (Night Angel, #1) by Brent Weeks
From the blurb:
For Durzo Blint, assassination is an art — and he is the city’s most accomplished artist.
For Azoth, survival is precarious. Something you never take for granted. As a guild rat, he’s grown up in the slums, and learned to judge people quickly — and to take risks. Risks like apprenticing himself to Durzo Blint….
The Warded Man (The Demon Cycle, #1) by Peter V. Brett
From the blurb:
For hundreds of years the demons have terrorized the night, slowly culling the human herd that shelters behind magical wards—symbols of power whose origins are lost in myth and whose protection is terrifyingly fragile. It was not always this way. Once, men and women battled the corelings on equal terms, but those days are gone.…
Magician: Apprentice (The Riftwar Saga, #1) by Raymond E. Feist
From the blurb:
Orphaned boy Pug is apprenticed to a powerful court magician named Kulgan in the world of Midkemia. Though ill at ease with the normal ways of wizardry, Pug soon earns his place as a squire after saving the life of one of the royals at court. But his courage will be tested still further when dark beings from another world open a rift in the fabric of spacetime to rekindle the age-old battle between the forces of Order and Chaos.…
Nevernight (The Nevernight Chronicle, #1) by Jay Kristoff
From the blurb:
In a land where three suns almost never set, a fledgling killer joins a school of assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers who destroyed her family.
Daughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father’s failed rebellion with her life. Alone and friendless, she hides in a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and her father’s former comrades….
Pawn of Prophecy (The Belgariad, #1) by David Eddings
From the blurb:
Long ago, so the Storyteller claimed, the evil God Torak sought dominion and drove men and Gods to war. But Belgarath the Sorcerer led men to reclaim the Orb that protected men of the West. So long as it lay at Riva, the prophecy went, men would be safe.
But that was only a story, and Garion did not believe in magic dooms, even though the dark man without a shadow had haunted him for years….
Assassin’s Apprentice (Farseer Trilogy, #1) by Robin Hobb
From the blurb:
Young Fitz is the bastard son of the noble Prince Chivalry, raised in the shadow of the royal court by his father’s gruff stableman. He is treated as an outcast by all the royalty except the devious King Shrewd, who has him secretly tutored in the arts of the assassin. For in Fitz’s blood runs the magic Skill—and the darker knowledge of a child raised with the stable hounds and rejected by his family.…